


The Family

by Crowlows19



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Batfamily Feels, Batfamily Shenanigans, Drabble Collection
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2020-09-26 15:08:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 19
Words: 14,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20391697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crowlows19/pseuds/Crowlows19
Summary: Batfamily drabbles of various themes. Bonding and slice of life moments between the members of the family.





	1. Black Insomnia

**Author's Note:**

> These chapters will range between 500 and 1000 words. I will be attempting to update this daily. We'll see how quickly I fail at that.

Tim was always at his least paranoid after a full night’s sleep. He was alert, generally in a better mood, and much more willing to be cooperative. It was unclear to Damian if Tim was aware of this flaw in his otherwise impenetrable armor but everyone else was perfectly aware of it. Whenever a family member was lucky enough to run into Tim post nine hours of sleep, they put in requests for favors they had been holding off until that very condition presented itself. 

Dick had once managed to convince Tim to go with him to a superheroes convention where people dressed up as their favorite superhero and wandered around a convention center to buy things they didn’t need at prices they couldn’t afford. Dick had said it was for a case, although it was never made clear what the case was about and Damian strongly suspected Dick just hadn’t wanted to go alone. They had kept a running tally on who had the most copycats and were pleased to report at a Justice League meeting they later went to uninvited, that the winner had been Black Canary. 

Jason had managed to convince Tim to go with him to a bar and about three hours later they had called home for someone to bail them out. Well, Tim had called home; Jason had used his one phone call to order a pizza. The guards at the jail had, of course, not allowed him to have it and it was unclear where that pizza had ended up. 

Cassandra had recently convinced Tim to do a spa day with her and Stephanie. Tim had come back with red toe nails but had otherwise seemed fine. 

And so Damian believed it was now his turn to ask a favor of Timothy, post nine hours of sleep. 

“I have something for you,” he said, as he walked into Tim’s room one Sunday evening. Tim was actually taking a rare, lazy Sunday, something neither he nor Damian had much practice in. Damian had recently become more fond of the concept, however. He may have been trained by the League of Assassins but he had never been more exhausted than when he had to deal with his siblings for longer than four hours. They were very tiring. 

“What is it?” Tim asked, setting his phone on the mattress and sitting up in bed. Damian tossed him a bag of coffee grounds. “Coffee?”

“It’s called Black Insomnia,” Damian said. “It just started selling in the United States. Apparently, it’s even stronger than those Death Wish grounds you love so much.”

“Huh,” Tim replied. “Thanks!”

“Of course,” Damian said. They stared at each other for a moment. 

“Is there something else you want?” Tim asked. He seemed more confused than suspicious. That was good; Damian was still doing this correctly then. 

“I need your help with a case,” Damian told him. “We might have to pull an all nighter.”

“Is it the Bowery case?” Tim asked eagerly. He was usually perfectly aware of what his siblings were up to and always eager to jump onto a new case. Damian knew it was because he liked solving the puzzle. Tim also enjoyed the journey to the end of a mystery while Damian just wanted the resolution. “Or the Amusement Mile murders?”

“It’s that weird Arkham case,” Damian replied. “The one with all that weird code. I don’t know the history of Arkham well enough to crack it.”

“Let’s do it!” Tim replied, up and out of the bed so fast that Damian actually flinched at the sudden movement, instinctively expecting an attack of some sort. 

Within five minutes they were in the cave, a pot of Tim’s new Black Insomnia coffee brewing.

Tim had cracked the code in less than a half an hour and had solved the case in less than two hours. By the time the Black Insomnia had really kicked in, he was on to the cold cases drawer and Damian simply watched from the couch they had in the cave as Tim tore through case after case on some sort of strange productivity binge. 

Pretty soon he had a full audience as he outlined a murder case from 1853 on a white board, his scribbles nearly illegible. He was talking so fast he was tripping over every other word and he didn’t even notice when people started to abandon the cave in the early morning hours for bed. 

About three days later, Father gave Tim a low dose tranquilizer to bring him back down to Earth and Damian was forbidden from ever giving Tim Black Insomnia again. Tim then slept for about 18 hours. 

But Damian considered it a success. Not only had Tim solved his Arkham case, he’d managed to clear seven of their cold cases, one which was older than Gotham itself and something Father technically only kept around because he used it as a teaching tool. 

It had definitely been worth it.


	2. TV

Despite what many of his teammates thought, Bruce actually enjoyed television. A good TV show was one of the few ways that his brain could turn off long enough for his body to relax and he could sleep. On those nights when he was too injured to go out even as a civilian and too ramped up to sleep, he would sit in the home theater of Wayne Manor and binge watch something. 

When Dick was a little boy he would join him at every possible moment, delighting in having an excuse to sprawl on the couch, in his pjs, eating junk food, and watching TV with Bruce. He would usually fall asleep a half hour in, one leg dangling off the couch, and his other periodically hitting Bruce in the ribs as he kicked out in his sleep. 

Dick was a restless sleeper, full of energy even then. He also wasn’t a cuddler, being perfectly comfortable with simply being in Bruce’s presence. The kid would take a hug anytime, anywhere but to be pressed up against another person for longer than a hug required him to stay far too still for far too long. When he was asleep, he simply rolled away. 

Bruce had taken many an elbow to the ribs and kicks to a leg when he’d been forced to share a sleep space with Dick. And he’d only gotten worse the older he’d gotten somehow finding himself with more energy rather than less. He would roll around in his bed until he had tangled himself up in his blankets or even fallen out of the bed. Bruce had helped him off the floor in the morning more often than he’d liked.

Alfred had said that as long as the kid wasn’t hurt and he seemed rested, it probably wasn’t something to worry about. Bruce kept a close eye on it anyway. 

Jason also hadn’t been one for physical contact when they had watched TV together. That was probably because Jason hadn’t enjoyed movies or TV as a kid and the only time he wanted to sit on the couch and do nothing was when he was sick. Usually, Bruce had to outright force him and always Jason felt too uncomfortable to be touched. He would curl into a ball and sleep for hours at the other end of the couch. 

But if Bruce even so much as shifted too much, Jason would wake up and ask him where he was going. So, Bruce had quickly learned that in order to get Jason to sleep, he too would have to sleep on couch. At least, it was a comfortable couch. 

Tim, on the other hand, would be pressed so closely to Bruce’s side it was as if he was glued there. It would take Bruce years and the adoption for Tim to finally say, off hand, that he had never watched TV with his parents except for some news here and there. They were usually not around and when they were they would take him out to museums or galas. Tim had always watched TV on his own until he’d started obsessing over superhero identities and other unsolvable mysteries.

Tim watched TV like he did everything else, with complete focus and a cup of coffee. Eventually, Bruce would make him stop drinking the caffeine and when the kid finally yawned, he would send him up to bed to sleep. 

It had taken Damian a while to even understand what the purpose of binge watching a TV show was. Bruce had mostly given up until he had discovered that Damian was willing to sit through it, only if all the other boys were there as well. If even one of the older brothers was missing, Damian would find a way to hide away in his own room. Bruce knew that Damian was driven by feelings of being left out. He would not miss a family gathering if he could help it because he didn’t want to be the odd brother out, especially when the age difference was so pronounced. 

It would only be a matter of an hour or two before everyone but Bruce and Tim were asleep. Bruce would stay behind but he would send Tim up to bed to sleep. He usually left everyone where they were otherwise. 

Bruce had watched a lot of TV over the years, but he would always refuse to watch Keeping up with the Kardashians. He didn’t care what Dick said; he wasn’t watching it.


	3. Sick Days

The kids had all been sick through the years, sometimes very seriously. Bruce had once been forced to drive a flu ridden Dick to the hospital, probably a little too fast, when he’d passed out at the breakfast table. He’d been seventeen at the time and Bruce had nearly strained his shoulder such was his difficulty in catching the boy before he hit his head on the way down. 

Jason had died, as he would remind everyone, anytime anyone complained about a physical ailment. He only stopped when Bruce started doing it to him, reminding him that at least he couldn’t die of a paper cut. Sometime after being brought back from the dead legally, Jason had been hospitalized with pneumonia which Bruce blamed on the very public and well documented, drunken dive into the below freezing Gotham Harbor. Jason, more or less bed ridden for a week in the ICU, had endured a week long lecture from Bruce with about as much grace as he had the energy to muster. He’d only cussed at him once. 

Damian would simply wander up to Bruce and say, “Father, I’m sick,” expecting Bruce to fix it then and there. Bruce always marveled at the fact that Damian was his easiest child to deal with when it came to illness. Bruce suspected that it was because Damian saw it as an inconvenience to be addressed and not a weakness to be hidden. Although, he did not enjoy the doctor and had been very upset with Bruce when he’d decided to take him to the hospital for an IV bag during a stomach flu instead of just using the supplies in the cave. It didn’t seem to matter that those were for gunshots and stabbings, not Damian’s stomach flu induced dehydration.

Tim, on the other hand, was determined to be as difficult as possible. Not only would he ignore symptoms until they became a much more serious problem, he was far less likely to admit that he’d ever had a problem in the first time. He was also the child that seemed to attract the most disaster. Tim’s medical files were twice the size of any of the other boys and that was just his civilian file. 

A quarter of the file consisted of the Clench and all of the recovery help they had needed following the outbreak. Another quarter consisted of Tim’s broken bones, most of which were not actually from his nighttime activities but from either skateboarding or falling out of trees as a young child. The last half consisted of all the times he’d been hospitalized with a flu, migraines, and a minor psychotic incident brought on by sleep deprivation that had technically happened under Jack Drake’s watch and something Bruce had never forgiven the other man for. 

And then there was the time that Tim had fallen ill on a Justice League operation when an injury had led to sepsis. The problem had started while he and Green Arrow had been pinned down by heavy fire for nearly a day and were under a strict radio silence order. They would have been fine if it hadn’t been for the tell tale signs of the sepsis, something everyone in the League could recognize with just a glance. Green Arrow had, eventually, broken the radio silence for an SOS, bringing Superman down on their location. 

Red Robin had been taken back to the Watch Tower for treatment, along with a half dozen others who had been injured, while the League wrapped up their operation. Batman, still in deep enemy territory, hadn’t been able to get to the infirmary until much later, when Red Robin had already woken up to questions about where his spleen was. 

Nightwing had been particularly concerned about who in the family even knew about that. It was dangerous not to put that in his personal file in the cave. 

He knew when he passed Batman on his way to visit the kid in the infirmary that the blow up was coming. He just wished Batman hadn’t done it where the entire waiting room could hear. He was going to duck out, not entirely willing to sit through it, when Superman had caught him in conversation. 

“Well, I imagine he’ll be okay now,” Superman eventually said and Nightwing couldn’t help but smile at the relief. “Green Arrow caught the sepsis just in time, I think.”

“Thanks,” he started, getting ready to tell their family friend what had really happened, but never got the chance. They were interrupted by Batman who yelled out so loud that people at the waiting room could hear him word for word, through the partially closed door of Red Robin’s room. Everyone stopped and turned to stare, fascinated despite themselves.

“WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN YOU DON’T HAVE A SPLEEN?” Batman shouted and though he probably sounded thoroughly angry to everyone else, Nightwing knew that the curse word meant he was actually bordering on hysteria. “WHERE IS YOUR SPLEEN?”

At least Bruce still had the presence of mind to not call Red Robin, Timothy Jackson, though Nightwing knew that was all he wanted to say during the two hour lecture that followed that little blow up. 

Red Robin never did answer the question about where his spleen was currently located.


	4. Of Middle Names and Rebel Children

Bruce, like any parent, had been known to shout the middle names of his children. The one who managed it the most had actually been Tim but that was mostly because he was the one who managed to frustrate Bruce the most. Dick could say he had heard, "Timothy Jackson!", shouted more often than any of the other names. He would have thought it would have been Jason who had the middle name swung at him the most, and maybe it was, but Dick was a firm believer that Tim was the silent, deadly troublemaker of the family. 

Dick had only ever heard, "Richard John!" once and that had been from Alfred. He'd also been an adult at the time. Usually just the use of Richard, was more than enough to get him to pay attention even if it wasn't said in anger. When he was a teenager Bruce had used it as a way to get the point across that whatever he was saying at the moment was extremely serious. Dick could count on one hand the number of times it had happened and the desired effect had always taken place when Bruce busted out the tactic. To this day, Dick would snap to attention when Bruce said, “Richard.”

But Dick couldn’t recall Bruce ever saying Richard John and especially not in anger. When Jason was around, it had been similar. There was never a moment that he could recall Jason Peter being tossed around, although, he was sure it had happened when he wasn’t there. Bruce had once confided in him that Jason used to be on his best behavior around Dick. The kid had been a little awestruck back then and it was a little hard to believe that there had once been a time that Dick had been the cool, older Robin that Jason admired. These days he was lucky to get through an hour before Jason rolled his eyes in disgust, which was definitely an improvement over the period of time when Jason would shoot at him in the first five minutes. He still missed that sweet thirteen year old kid sometimes.

But Tim was another story. Dick heard Timothy Jackson all the time. Jason thought that it was maybe because the third kid broke the camel’s back, as the saying went, and unleashed Bruce’s inner dad in full force. It would take Dick years to convince a bemused, skeptical Jason that Tim wasn’t actually a quiet, timid, goody two shoes. 

Jason may have hid cigarettes in his room for a late night smoke break, but Tim hid caffeine pills and stayed awake for four days, binging case files like Bruce was going to shut down the whole Batman operation at any second. Jason may have stolen the tires from the Batmobile, but Tim stole the actual Batmobile and smuggled it across the country without Bruce even finding out. Jason may have cussed up a storm, but Tim could stone cold lie to Batman’s face and make even Alfred believe it. Jason may have lived on his own in the streets for a few years turning him hard and wild, but Tim had been abandoned to unlimited privilege, turning him into an unconquerable machine hell bent on getting his own way.

Jason eventually conceded the point after watching Tim topple Gotham’s largest drug operation with nothing more than a case of Redbull, his laptop, and his unfailing ability to keep Bruce from locating him. 

“He didn’t even leave the fucking couch,” Jason had ranted to Dick over lunch one day. 

“How would you know?” Dick said. “Maybe he left when you weren’t looking.”

“He was using my couch,” Jason replied. “I watched that kid for three days. He never left the couch except to pee. He didn’t even shower. It was kind of gross, actually. Does Bruce know about that?”

“Yeah, he puts a stop to it pretty quick,” Dick said. “That’s probably why he did that on your couch and not the Manor or any of his safe houses.”

”Still,” Jason continued. “The kid needs to learn to take a shower everyday. I don’t care if he’s just sitting around, looking at a screen. He still stunk and his breath was the most god awful thing I’ve ever smelled.”

Dick laughed. 

“How does Bruce get him to stop?” Jason asked. “I couldn’t stop it, even when I pointed a gun in his face. Replacement didn’t even flinch; he knows I’m not gonna pull trigger anymore.”

“Timothy Jackson,” Dick said, using his best Angry Bruce voice. “Get off of the couch and into the shower, now! If I have to tell you again, you’re benched for a week.”

Jason laughed for five minutes straight. 

Tim would always hold the record for most times Bruce busted out the middle name. Cassandra didn’t even have a middle name and Dick secretly suspected she was Bruce’s favorite, anyway. Damian was the type of kid that when he did release a “Damian Thomas!”, Bruce was met with either an eye roll or a very sincere look of confusion like he didn’t understand why Bruce thought saying his full name was a punishment. Bruce had quickly learned to pivot to other tactics. 

It had become such a running joke in the family that Jason, in a fit of mischievous boredom, had once bet Tim the spare change in his pocket that he couldn’t get Bruce to say the name more than once in ten minutes. Not only had Tim succeeded, he succeeded to the point of being grounded for a week, something that consisted of no patrol, no cases, and no Internet. He claimed that the look on Jason’s face had made the grounding well worth the grueling boredom of that next week.


	5. Clark's Opinion: Dick Grayson

Dick had really been the first child to be around this kind of life. None of the other Justice League Founders had been anywhere close to making that kind of step when Hal Jordan had first whispered rumors to Barry Allen about Batman’s kid. He had only been nine-years-old at the time, not even in uniform yet, and still just beginning his training when Hal had come across him swinging around in the cave as if he belonged in the air. 

A couple of weeks later the tabloids had gotten wind of the custody papers Bruce filed and the story hit the airwaves like a ton of bricks, knocking aside political scandals and unrest in a third world country. All anybody could talk about, especially in Gotham, was Dick Grayson. 

Through the years, having worked with Dick, and having had the privilege of watching him grow up, Clark had come to expect that the boy would want to strike out on his own. He knew, without a doubt, that Dick would break Bruce’s heart at some point. It wasn’t his fault; it was just inevitable. That was the way with children, after all. He knew that without even having had one. 

But it was also a strange situation, as well. Bruce had been twenty-two when he’d taken Dick in. He’d been in his prime, in every tabloid, every night, and then going out to accomplish things Clark could never imagine without super powers. He hadn’t needed a partner. Had probably never even thought about it and most certainly had never thought about one day being a parent. Bruce had once told him that he’d fully expected to be dead within five years of first putting on the cowl, even with all that training. He hadn’t really had any reason not be dead other than sheer will and stubbornness. 

So, Dick Grayson had actually been a surprise to everyone, though a very welcome one. After all, the change in Bruce may have been subtle to an outsider but to the people who knew him best, the change was like night and day. Suddenly there were foster care appointments, parent-teacher conferences, and even a very candid conversation where Bruce had asked Clark if he’d watch out for Dick if one night Bruce didn’t make it home. There was even legal paperwork that Clark would take Dick as his own, if Alfred was unable to do so. 

But it was Robin who really kicked off the most change. Before that boy flew through the Gotham City skyline in those bright colors, there hadn’t really been a sidekick, certainly not one that young. Robin had quickly become the picture of the ideal sidekick, whether that was fair or not. He was the picture of what happened when extraordinary talent was shaped by intensive, focused training and very soon Robin was not only the test case, but a leader to many of the kids who popped up on the scene soon after. 

Robin had made it okay for a child to step up and take on a burden that may not have been right for them to take on. But Robin could shoulder it, and he did it with more grace than some adults ever did. Clark sometimes wished he’d known Dick from before he was orphaned so he could know how much of Dick’s incredible inner strength was forged by his parents, by Bruce, or by Dick himself. 

However, while Dick may have been on a pedestal for everyone else, for Bruce he was still just a scrawny teenager, something Dick heavily resented. After all, you can’t be a fearless leader when your Dad is calling you out for leaving cereal bowls in your desk drawer or for not making your bed. Dick had even gone so far as to try and keep his superhero work separate from the Batman’s to the point that it had strained their relationship, both in uniform and out of it. And because both of them were young and stubborn, it would be a while before they managed to get back to where they had been in the glory days. 

It had been a crazy ride watching Bruce Wayne figure out how to parent someone as free willed as Dick Grayson. The Manor would lose several chandeliers over the years, most of them after being dared by a younger sibling yet to come, and Batman had been tackled by a flying Robin coming in from above more than once, and in front of many people. The brightness that boy brought back to Bruce’s life would always be, in Clark’s opinion, one of the most beautiful things Clark had ever seen. And that, he thought, was the real purpose of the Batman. To beat back the darkness, not just for others, but for himself as well.


	6. Clark's Opinion: Jason Todd

Jason was the most contradictory person Clark would ever know. He could be incredibly kind and then turn incredibly brutal the next moment, sometimes to the same person. He was a Robin and maybe a criminal, though everyone seemed to have a different opinion regarding what he was. He was a member of Batman's family but would sometimes try to kill one of them. In general, they had a very complicated dynamic. 

He had known that Dick's feelings about Jason had also been contradictory, at best. They'd had a long talk about it over pie the first time Superman had run into the newly minted Nightwing in Metropolis. Dick had ranted for a solid forty five minutes about Bruce taking in another kid and giving away his mantle as Robin. He liked Jason, had even spoken highly of him, calling him Little Wing, but that hadn't stopped him from ranting about Bruce taking him in, nonetheless. 

It had been clear to Clark that any resentment Dick might have had about Jason in the Robin costume was truly misplaced. Even Dick seemed to recognize it and as far as Clark knew, Dick had always taken Jason's calls even if he consistently sent Bruce to voicemail. 

And when Jason had come back to life, appearing on the scene as the Red Hood, there had been a tidal wave of gossip and concern. Even with Batman's eventual approval to operate in Gotham, Jason wasn't actually welcome in any other city. It was not uncommon for Batman to get a call from a teammate demanding he find some way to control Jason. 

Clark had never bothered with such a phone call. He knew Jason was too headstrong and far too skilled for Bruce to control. He knew that Batman technically could but that was a line that Bruce could never come back from. With Jason newly resurrected legally, such a move would definitely send the family spiraling. And that was if Bruce even wanted to make that sort of move. 

No, Clark firmly believed that regardless of Jason's tactics, and he seemed to be going back to normal even if he was a little on the brutal side, that Jason was still that little street kid with the goofy smile and bad mouth. So, while others may have fretted about these Outlaws who used to be heroes, Clark wasn't too concerned. All he had do was listen to Damian talk about how Jason had taught him this and Jason had told him that, to know that Jason was still apart of the family. Damian talked about Jason a lot, now that Clark thought about it.

But the real person that Clark had based his judgement on, had been Tim. Not only was he a firm believer in Tim's judgement of character and his ability to tell when a person was trying play him, but he also genuinely liked the boy. And if Tim could forgive Jason and forge a brotherhood that Clark was certain was unbreakable, then the rest of them could at least take a hard look at what it meant to be a Robin and perhaps be far more sympathetic.


	7. Clark's Opinion: Tim Drake

Bruce Wayne didn't have a favorite child but if you asked him who his most difficult child was, and Clark had, he would always say Tim. Sure, Dick had a tendency to send chandeliers crashing to the floor even in his twenties, Jason was drinking too much, Damian still wouldn't relinquish his sword, Cassandra was a little savage, and Duke too fresh to even be remotely comfortable, but Tim was another ballpark altogether. Everyone from the D-List Titans reserve members to the Founders of the Justice League knew that. Each of those kids had gained respect over the years, but nobody had gained Bruce as much sympathy as Tim had, especially from those Leaguers who also had children. 

There had been the time he'd broken into the Justice League's database, stealing files, and only getting caught because he'd acted a little too cagey when Alfred asked him why he was still awake at four in the morning. There had been that time he'd not only smuggled one of Batman's cars across the country but had then let Kid Flash crash it. There had been the time he'd walked into a Justice League reserves meeting in his civilian clothes, clearly on a caffeine binge, and proceeded to lecture new recruits for a solid two hours about the Dark Web before someone from Gotham could be summoned to pick him up (Hal Jordan had teased Bruce about it for months). There was the time he'd almost single handedly taken down the League of Assassins, something they were all still marveling over. There were the secret missions, the unauthorized ops, and the fifteen hundred page Teen Titans bylaws document he'd written for the sole purpose of manipulating the Titans Founders into doing what he wanted, when he wanted. 

And that was just the public stuff. 

Clark had also known about the time Tim had lied to both Bruce and Jack Drake in order to disappear on a six week long field op he had designed and then perfectly executed which was probably the only reason Bruce hadn't benched him permanently. Jack hadn't noticed. And then, after Jack's death, Tim had created a fake Uncle so that he wouldn't have to live by anyone's rules but his own, doing such a good job it had taken Bruce nearly eight months to catch on, something Bruce was strangely proud of. And that wasn't even the only fake relative Tim had used to his advantage. Dick had told Clark about Tim hiring actors to pose as his parents when he needed an adult to interact with his school or any other kind of authority figure. That had only worked until his adoption had been announced and nobody would believe that the actor from the community theater was Bruce Wayne.

Sometimes Clark wondered if that was one of the reasons Bruce had made it official. He’d wanted to stop Tim from needing to use an actor and just call him instead. 

Clark had been tricked by Tim several times over the years but it never stung in the same way as when it was Bruce doing it. Perhaps because Clark knew, with absolute certainty, that Tim clung to his friendships with a much tighter grip than Bruce did and he knew that he could count on those friendships to keep the boy from crossing the line. And that was before you even got to the siblings, all of whom had knocked sense into Tim at one point or another, sometimes physically. 

But Clark also trusted Bruce to keep the boy from getting too out of hand. He’d seen them together often enough to know that even though Tim was by far the most difficult child, he was still Bruce’s child and Bruce definitely knew how to reign him back in. Whether it was holding on to Tim’s cape so he physically couldn’t move, cutting off a credit card to curb a Starbucks binge, or even hiding the keys to his car so he’d have to sleep in the Manor instead of pulling an all nighter in his apartment, Tim was an un-parentable child, being parented by a man who might be the only person in the universe actually capable of doing so.

That usually set Clark’s mind at ease whenever that slight smirk Tim would get when another piece of another puzzle snapped into place appeared on his face. 

After all, braver men then him had learned to fear that smirk. 


	8. Clark's Opinion: Cassandra Cain

He'd first met her on a case that he'd followed from Metropolis to Gotham, finding her on a patrol with Batman. He had thought she was a little brutal in her fighting style, but ultimately efficient and controlled. She never spoke to him which he had tried not to take personally and had been especially saddened by the story Bruce had told him about her upbringing to explain when they'd met for their monthly coffee. 

It had been immediately clear to him that Bruce held her in high regard and cared about what happened to her deeply. So, it had been no surprise to him when the gossip rags had caught on to the fact that she had been officially adopted by Bruce Wayne even though the paperwork had only made it official the day before her eighteenth birthday. It qualified her for a trust fund and a lot of paparazzi photos. 

They would hound her, looking to get a rise, and though they certainly got a rise out of Jason and even Dick, she had never spoken to them. She had never even acknowledged their presence, even when the comments had turned nasty, the worst of the paparazzi desperate to get a high paying photo. 

Clark had liked that about her the most. She just seemed to carry herself with such grace even though he knew the comments probably brought up bad memories from her time with the League or on the streets. 

But what Clark liked most about Cassandra was how she seemed to soften Bruce in a way no one ever had. Bruce had always been simultaneously very soft and very tough on all of his boys, but with Cassandra, it was somehow different. He was tough on her, the same as he was tough on everyone, but those softer moments were some how softer. 

And it was the same with the boys too. While they would still yell and fling each other through windows, nobody seemed to even think about doing that with Cassandra, even when they were mad at her and even though she was tougher than all of them. There was far less talk about Jason's belching problem and far more talk about Cassandra's upcoming ballet recital or that ASL class they were all supposed to be at the next afternoon. 

Bruce and Cassandra could simply sit in a room together and just be. They would move around each other in a silence that, while Clark found it awkward, they seemed to find it peaceful. Every now and then, they would speak to each other in ASL and then go back to what they were doing. Bruce had once brought Cassandra to their monthly coffee and the two of them had signed to each other for half an hour before Bruce remembered that Clark was even there. 

Clark was used to this behavior. Bruce did it every time he brought a kid to monthly coffee. Clark had always enjoyed watching the dynamic between each child play out in front of him, he just wished he knew what they were saying. 

When he got back to the office later that day, he ordered a book on ASL. He would later deny to Lois that it was because he was trying to find out if they had been talking about him in front of his face.


	9. Clark's Opinion: Damian Wayne

Clark liked how the boy challenged everyone and everything, including Bruce. Damian was smart and unyielding. He knew what he wanted and he would barrel towards it without hesitation. It was a behavior that Clark had seen in all the Robins, Tim especially, but it was also something that he recognized in Bruce. Really, Damian rounded out the brothers very well. He challenged them all and Clark really appreciated the challenge he gave Tim, not just as a fellow Robin but as a brother. 

They probably could have been less brutal with one another but Tim had a remarkable ability to empathize and forgive. The relationship between Damian and Tim seemed incredibly contentious on the surface but Clark had had Damian in his house enough times to know that Damian was actually rather fond of Tim. He said it via insults but Clark had been around this family long enough to know when an insult was an insult and when an insult was a term of endearment. 

He especially knew that they were closer than they seemed when Jon had told him that he and Damian had called Tim for help on a case and Tim had dropped everything he was doing. The older boy had been there within the hour. Neither Tim nor Damian would admit that it was because they liked working together or the verbal sparring, but Clark knew. Whereas even Bruce would have to follow behind Tim, trying to keep up with whatever he had planned, Damian seemed to know what Tim was doing before he did it. 

There was also the time he spent with Jason, down in Crime Alley, and learning how people less fortunate than himself struggled. It made Damian less superior about the things he shouldn't have been superior about. Jason was also the brother always willing to take him to the pet store or help him take care of the varied animals he'd collected when he went on an operation overnight. 

And everyone knew the relationship he had with Dick. 

But what Clark liked the most about Damian was his friendship with Jon. Having his own genuine friendship with Bruce and having watched his other family members interact with their own bats, he was genuinely pleased that Damian and Jon got along so well. Damian made Jon smarter; Jon made Damian softer. 

Clark had never expected to have one of Batman's sons at his house every other weekend for sleep overs or hearing Jon introduce Damian as his best friend, but it was nice to hear nonetheless. Perhaps it was because he had never expected to have such a normal conversation with Bruce as the ones they had about when to pick up Damian from Metropolis. Sometimes he felt like he was experiencing whiplash when Bruce would tell him in one breath that Damian was spending the night on Saturday and in the next ask if he'd heard any chatter about Intergang. 

It was clear to Clark that Damian brought a spark back to the cave. Whether it was his Bruce-like personality wrapped in a small body, or the simple fact that there was a younger Robin again, Clark couldn't even begin to guess. 

All he knew was that according to the group text between Bruce, Lois, and himself, Damian was coming with them for their Spring Break vacation and that Clark was in charge of making sure he didn't try to smuggle any knives past security like the last time he'd flown commercial.


	10. Clark's Opinion: Duke Thomas

Duke Thomas was lighter than the others and so very new that he still stumbled over his words when faced with the impossible. Superman had purposefully flown to Gotham City one day to get a look at this new vigilante with the strange powers and the Batman's emblem on his chest. 

Batman hadn't been around and the boy had been a little awestruck, reminding him so strongly of his first, long ago meeting with Dick that he couldn't help but smile. 

"So, you're the new one," he'd said, floating in the air 63 stories above the ground in front of Signal, who was perched on the rooftop. 

"Um, yeah, I guess," the kid had replied. "Batman said metas weren't allowed in Gotham."

"You're a meta," Superman replied. 

"Metas other than me," Signal clarified and Superman smiled, because, of course, Batman had bothered to make such a rule and such a exception. And of course, that exception hadn't included Superman.

"How long have been working for him?" Superman asked. "Batman doesn't take new ones on lightly."

"About a month, I guess," Signal replied. Superman could tell that he was making the boy nervous. He left quickly enough after that, going to meet Bruce for their monthly coffee and getting a lecture from the man about not intimidating the new kid. Apparently, the boy had texted Bruce as soon as Superman had left. Clark had thought it was incredibly ironic that a man who had built his life's passion on intimidation was lecturing him about that very thing. 

He would run into this Signal a few times in the next several months, always accompanied by another brother, be they older or younger. He thought it was interesting how the others had managed to bring Duke into the fold. And he thought it was incredibly hilarious how protective they were and how much that annoyed Duke, who had been an only child for the first sixteen years of his life. 

Clark made it a point to talk with Duke when they met next at the Wayne Foundation Gala. It wasn't clear whether Duke knew who he was talking to or not, though Clark had been deemed somewhat important by his seat at the head table. They talked a lot about journalism, puzzles, and the upcoming Gotham Knights and Metropolis Giants game. The boy had a knack for numbers and apparently he was crushing it at the family fantasy football league. 

"Dick and Jason seem to enjoy it," he told Clark. "Cass and Steph are way too competitive, though. And it's hilarious watching Damian trying to figure out the rules. Jason keeps making up new ones just to mess with him."

"What about Tim?" Clark asked, knowing that Tim's mind for analytics would have made him stiff competition. 

"He completely forgot about it after the draft and nobody bothered to tell him."

Clark genuinely laughed and Duke laughed with him. He liked this boy; he hoped that Duke kept that lighter side to him. Gotham had a way of making it's heroes dark and broken, after all.


	11. Wake Up Calls

Part of being a parent, in Bruce's mind, was putting up with interrupted sleep. Despite the fact that Batman and Robin were out in the city at all hours of the night, the boys seemed to always find a way to sleep even less, bringing Bruce out of his much needed sleep and into the waking world. 

When Dick had been really young, he was prone to bursting into Bruce's room day or night and flipping onto the bed. Sometimes he landed on the mattress and sometimes he landed on Bruce. It had taken a couple of years to train him not to do such a thing lest he land on something broken, and cause further injury to one or both of them. As he'd gotten older and more dramatic, he would simply flop down onto the bed, sprawled out, and limbs going everywhere. Bruce had a huge bed and it still wasn't big enough for both himself and a teenaged Dick. 

Bruce would always ask, "What are you doing?"

And Dick would always answer, "I learned a new move!"

00000

Jason would also come in at all hours but he was at least quiet about it. He would stand over Bruce at the side of the bed, smacking his gum or eating Skittles until the man would wake up and ask him what he wanted. Sometimes it was a ride to school, sometimes he wanted an opinion on a theory he had, but most of the time he simply wanted Bruce to spar him. Jason loved to spar. When Jason became an adult he would still stand over Bruce, now with a cigarette, a beer, or a gun depending on his plans for the night. 

Bruce would always ask, "What do you want?"

And Jason would always answer, "We got stuff to do, old man. Get out of bed."

00000

The only time Bruce would ever see Tim in his bedroom was between 2 am and whenever the sun rose. Tim also never managed to come into his room while he was already awake but that never seemed to bother the boy. He would wander in, usually after having solved whatever case he was currently obsessing over, walk right up to the bed, step up on the mattress, and just stand there. Bruce thought it was creepy and had taught himself to wake up as soon as the door opened. At least Tim wasn't quiet when he came in and Bruce was awake quickly enough. 

Bruce would always ask, "Did you solve it?"

And Tim would always answer, "You'll never guess the answer. It's awesome."

00000

Damian never came in alone. He would come into the room, so quietly Bruce would never know he was there, being trailed by either Alfred the Cat or Titus. Ace would lift his head up from where he was sleeping on the rug, sniff the air, and lay back down, doing absolutely nothing to warn Bruce. If it was Alfred the Cat, Bruce would wake to face full of cat hair when the cat jumped onto his head. If it was Titus, he would wake to the dog licking his face. Neither experience was pleasant and Bruce did an uncharacteristic amount of flailing when it happened. He would wake up to a smirking Damian. 

Bruce would always ask, "Do you need something?"

And Damian would always answer, "I have an idea. Will you come to the cave?"

00000

One day, Bruce vowed, he would feel as if he'd gotten enough sleep.


	12. The Empty House Next Door

Bruce had once wandered through the Drake family mansion back in the early days when it could be counted on that no one was there. He had met Jack and Janet a few times through the years and he had mostly ignored them, pegging them to be opportunists. He had known about the boy, of course. He kept files on everyone who lived in his neighborhood and especially the direct neighbors of which there were only two. The Drake family on the property adjacent to his and the Wongs on the property two miles down the road. The Wayne family had once owned this entire hill. Thanks to some wild and not very intelligent ancestors, they now just owned most of it. 

What he hadn't known was that the neighbor boy was essentially living in the house on his own. If he'd known that, he would have placed a call to Madeline Corbraith at Child Protective Services. She had helped him with the fostering of both Dick and Jason and he had known her to be a consummate professional. She couldn't be denied her job simply because some nobody thought he was rich and powerful. Nor could she be denied by the threat of violence and gang activity. She had suffered them all through the years and, still, she did her best to protect the children in her charge. Bruce liked that about her. 

Most of the house was shut down; there were sheets over of a good deal of the furniture and dust over the uncovered pieces. The boy had told him there was a housekeeper, but he was seeing very little evidence of her. With her bosses constantly away, she may have not been coming as often they thought she was. 

The kitchen wasn't stocked unless you counted the three cases of Redbull, eight jars of peanut butter, and the pound of gummy worms he found. He'd also found a single carrot that Tim would seemingly take a bite of and then would put back in the fridge. Well, at least he tried.

The only room with any evidence of a person in it had been Tim's room. Alfred would have had a stroke if he ever saw it, but to Bruce, it was more evidence that an adult was not remotely present in the house. Tim had thrown stuff everywhere. Most of his closet was on the floor, the stacked pizza boxes on the desk stunk, and there were at least fifty empty Redbull cans scattered about. 

When Bruce opened the closet door he at least saw why the clothes were on the floor. Tim had turned his walk-in closet into a command center. He was currently investigating superheroes. That much Bruce could make out of the jumble of pictures, articles, sticky notes, and red string that were strewn across three walls and part of the ceiling. Dick had told him a story of how Tim had figured out their identities; the boy had clearly gotten bored with them and moved on to the rest of the Justice League. 

He had figured out Clark and Oliver, based on what Bruce saw. If his interpretation of the inside of Tim's mind was correct, he might have also figured out Barry and Hal, as well. 

Bruce shut the closet door and used his phone to take a picture of the room. He'd taken a picture of every room he'd been in. He put the photos in the Drake family file which he had moved to a part of their computer system that not even Alfred had access to. 

00000 

Bruce had gotten more and more passive-aggressive with Jack Drake through the years, sometimes to the point of being outright petty, something he wasn't too proud of. When Jack had thanked him for taking care of Tim while he'd been in the coma, Bruce had simply responded with, "I didn't do anything I wasn't already doing," and left Jack in his wheelchair in his living room to ponder that one. 

He knew that Jack suspected that his neighbor had known the state of Tim's living situation before his father's coma and the death of his mother. Bruce had been pleased to have actual, legal control of Tim for the short time that he did. Mostly because it meant he could get the boy's behavior back on track. Tim's school had been threatening to expel him if he pulled another stunt and Headmaster Hammer had been more than happy to take Bruce's call when he wanted a meeting about the boy. 

And he was pretty sure Tim finally had more than a single bite of carrot for the first time in his life. Alfred made sure of that. 

Bruce had documented everything in the heavily secured, hidden away corner of his computer system. 

00000 

Jack's grip on Tim tightened after he lost the Drake family fortune. He was finally pulled from boarding school and enrolled back in Gotham Academy on a scholarship and a hefty, anonymous donation from Bruce. Even though Tim wasn't technically his responsibility, Bruce still took that on. 

That was his Robin. Of course, he would. 

And Jack Drake wasn’t so much of an obstacle that Bruce couldn’t do what he wanted in the end. After all, all he had to do was wait a minute and Jack Drake would eventually disappear for a week or two with Dana, leaving Tim to Bruce’s full control while he was gone. Bruce didn’t much care for that; Dick said it was because he didn’t like to share.


	13. We Knew

Bruce was not stupid. 

He knew that, through the years, there would always be people who suspected his role as Batman. There would be a girlfriend that got too close, someone he’d thought there could be a possible future with and then backed out the moment before true trust could be exhibited. 

There had been a socialite named Tana who Bruce had been certain knew the truth. She was sly, smart, and incredibly self-serving. While she would make comments here and there throughout their six dates and thirty-year friendship, she never outright said what she knew. More importantly, she never told anyone else, not even when it would have been the easiest thing in the world to do so. Not even when it would have been to her advantage to do so. Tana had kept that secret to herself using it to flirt with him, but not much else.

There were the employees of Wayne Enterprises’s Research & Development department who recognized parts and gadgets that ended up in the hands of the nightly news. They knew that either their boss had a direct line to the Batman or he was the crazy guy flinging himself off buildings dressed like a bat. 

There had been an employee named Calvin McCallister, a rising star in the company and a brilliant inventor. He’d known immediately when he’d seen one of his inventions on live, breaking news where Batman was in battle, the Justice League at his side. Some alien Calvin would vaguely recall, years later. He had been incredibly proud of that moment, watching his device protect his planet. He’d spent the rest of that night at the drawing board thinking of all the other things he could put in the hands of the Justice League.

There were the teachers at Gotham Academy, who, with each boy, had held some reservations about what was going on in his home. How could they not? There were bruises, broken bones, and long, unexplained absences. They would long have had social services knocking on their door if Headmaster Hammer hadn’t known what was going on. The man had never said it aloud, especially not to the boys, but Bruce knew. 

There had been so many teachers who had voiced concerns through the years, and Headmaster Hammer had held them all off with stories of how he had personally witnessed them all doing something incredibly stupid and dangerous, walking away with the same kinds of injuries that teacher was so concerned about. There were even pictures confiscated from students’ phones and videos that had been posted to the Internet. And there had been that time Jason, desperate and being followed, had stashed his Robin armor in his locker which had been found on a search for drugs. The dog had pinpointed it immediately because of the residue on the uniform and Headmaster Hammer had opened it, seen what was inside, and slammed it shut again before anyone could see, somehow convincing everyone that it was empty. Bruce had seen it all on the security cameras. 

There were the policemen who had stopped buying lame excuses a long time ago. It was strange how often Bruce Wayne would disappear into a crowd just in time for Batman to show up. A key observer with twenty years of data to play with couldn’t be fooled by excuses about hiding under tables. It was an open secret in the family that Commissioner Gordon had figured it out years ago. Only Bruce knew about Harvey Bullock. 

There was the family doctor, dentist, and tailor who had seen more bruises and scars than could be explained by the spelunking excuse Bruce always threw their way. After all, the worn-down cartilage, cracked teeth, and bruised skin couldn’t be hidden all the time. 

There had been so many people over the years. They knew pieces; some knew the whole truth. 

Their memory would whisper throughout Gotham City’s history, “We knew.”

And those pieces of what they knew were passed down through the years until it was a common urban legend that Bruce Wayne was Batman.


	14. Punishment Miles

Bruce had always felt deeply conflicted about mixing punishments with training. On the one hand, he didn’t want the kids to develop a sense of dread towards their training; it was too important. And on the other hand, it pleased him to put an unruly kid on the treadmill, press start, and make them run until it was out of their system. It built up their stamina, Bruce told himself and it was far more effective for the minor infractions than a simple grounding. 

Not a single one of his kids had ever reacted well to a grounding. Dick would just flip and back spring his way off the grounds; Jason would steal a car; Damian didn’t understand the concept; Cassandra hadn’t been adopted until eighteen; Duke would simply ignore him as if he hadn’t said anything. He had tried once with Tim and it had taken him two weeks to find him holed up in an apartment Bruce didn’t know he had, deep in a Dark Web case. Tim had been fourteen at the time.

“You’re supposed to be grounded,” Bruce had reminded him, trying to ignore the rank smell coming from the pile of pizza boxes on the table. 

“Are you still on about that?” Tim had asked, annoyed. In response, Bruce had slipped a tranquilizer into a cup of coffee and Tim had woken up in his own bed the next morning. Bruce had never tried it with him again and Tim’s body had quickly taken the shape of a runner’s body, all lean and hard muscle, due to the number of hours he spent on that treadmill. 

There were many nights when Bruce wondered if Tim even considered it a punishment. He couldn’t tell; the kid’s poker face was too good. 

He eventually figured it out though. 

000000

Jason had dragged Tim into an operation that Bruce had specifically told them not to engage in. He had been working on it already, coming at it from a different direction than what Jason had wanted to do. It was unclear if Tim had known that but based on events yet to come, Bruce suspected that he had and used it to his advantage. 

They were very well trained at least and the case was closed even if it happened in a way Bruce thought was unnecessarily loud and explosive. Really, did Jason have to blow up every warehouse he raided?

Bruce had thrown both of them onto a treadmill and demanded a marathon from each of them before they could get off. Jason had scoffed at him claiming to be “an adult, dammit Bruce, leave me alone!” He had ultimately lost the ensuing argument and ended up right next to Tim, who had taken up his usual treadmill, strapped on the heart monitor they used for training, and hit the quick-start button. Bruce had the entire gym area in the cave wired for audio and video, and he monitored both of them closely from his spot at his computer. 

“I can’t believe he’s making us do this,” Jason panted. It concerned Bruce that he was already winded and only three miles in. What was even more interesting was that Tim was pretending to be just as winded. Bruce knew Tim; he was a better runner than this. 

“Just get through it,” Tim gritted out. 

They ran in silence for another couple miles. 

“I hate him,” Jason seethed.

“No,” Tim replied. “You don’t. You just can’t run anymore.” Jason’s vitals were concerning and it was clear to Bruce that Jason had probably been taking his Outlaw persona a little too seriously. It was well documented that both of his identities as Red Hood and as Jason Todd were hard-drinking and hard-smoking. Bruce had assumed he had been keeping up with his training to counteract some of it since he knew the boy better than to think he would only pretend to drink whiskey. 

Bruce had been catching him with cigarettes and whiskey bottles since he was thirteen years old. 

“Fuck you,” Jason panted. “You’re just as bad. Those all-nighters and coffee diet aren’t good for you kid.” 

“Because your lifestyle is so much healthier,” Tim replied.

“I’m a beast,” Jason assured him. 

But he went downhill fast. Around the tenth mile, he could barely breathe and Bruce could see it in his face that only stubbornness was keeping him going. And that wasn’t enough. 

Suddenly, Jason hit the emergency stop, ripped off his heart monitor, and stumbled to the back of the gym area. Tim twisted his head around to watch him, concerned. 

“Tim, keep going,” Bruce said through the intercom, before rushing to the gym area. He got there just as Jason put an oxygen mask to his face, trying to breathe. Bruce could see in his face that he was close panic. Jason always panicked when he felt like he couldn’t breathe; it was a by-product of waking up in a coffin. He collapsed onto a bench and Bruce knelt in front of him. He put two fingers on the pulse point on Jason’s neck and put the other hand on Jason’s knee. 

“Jason, look at me,” he ordered softly. Jason’s eyes met his. “Breathe. Breathe with me.”

It took several minutes but finally, Jason’s heart rate and breathing slowed. He put the oxygen mask down and Bruce took his hand off Jason’s pulse point resting it on the bench but otherwise he didn’t move. 

“Those cigarettes are going to get you killed,” he said. He didn’t even try to address the drinking. One step at a time. “You can barely get ten miles, Jason. This is a game of endurance. Understand?”

Jason nodded but he managed to scowl. It wasn’t aimed at Bruce though; it was aimed at Tim who was whistling a happy tune while he ran. When the boy could feel their eyes on his back, he reached up and increased the speed of the treadmill. His fake wheezing had stopped and his ability to run was on full display. 

“I hate him,” Jason seethed. 

“No, you don’t,” Bruce replied, smiling softly. “He just wants you to quit smoking, is all.”


	15. Speeding Ticket

Bruce had hated it when Dick had become a police officer. He had outright despised the idea that his former Robin was out on the streets with what he considered to be inadequate backup and woefully inadequate armor. Dick had thought that his position was not only highly hypocritical but just plain snobbish. 

They had fought about it for the entire time that Dick was at the Academy. All 24 weeks of it. Bruce had sent some strongly worded texts which Dick had ignored so he’d left some strongly worded voicemails which Dick had also ignored. When he’d finally checked his emails he’d found more messages from Bruce demanding that he quit immediately and come back to Gotham. Dick had ignored those too. 

Bruce had managed to come to his graduation though; Dick strongly suspected Alfred’s firm disapproval as the driving factor behind the man’s attendance. He had also brought along Barbara, something Dick had actually been grateful for as she was far more supportive. There had been a very tense dinner in which Barbara babbled into the ether, clearly uncomfortable, and Bruce made no attempt to be anything but sour. 

He dropped it after that, for the most part. They worked cases together here and there and Dick had only had to endure the barest of snide comments about the Bludhaven police force. Dick would have been furious about his lack of support if he hadn’t been perfectly aware that it came from a place of abject fear. Bruce was outright convinced that Dick was going to be shot and killed. 

It had quickly become the norm for Bruce to randomly call him if he felt Dick hadn’t been active enough in the group text or hadn’t called Alfred recently enough. They were very strange calls, more hang-ups than anything else. Bruce didn’t actually want to talk about anything and he wasn’t a man that would call just to chat. 

The phone would ring and when Dick answered he’d be met with, “You alive?”

“Yeah,” he’d respond. 

“Need backup?”

“Not right now.”

And then Bruce would simply hang up. 

He had once had this conversation in front of a trainee who happened to be in the passenger seat of Dick’s cruiser for a ride-a-long.

“Who was that?” he asked. Dick hadn’t told a single soul about Bruce; he hadn’t wanted to hear all the predictable jokes and jibes. He thought they were too boring to endure. 

“My dad,” he said vaguely knowing that if he said, “My guardian,” he’d get even more questions. 

“Short conversation,” the guy noted. 

“He’s not much of a talker,” Dick replied remembering all the mornings that Dick would talk at him and Bruce would grunt in return. The man considered that a full-blown conversation. The memory of it made Dick roll his eyes. 

Two weeks later, Dick had that same trainee, Matheson was his name, when a top of the line Mercedes Benz sped past him, going far too fast for the zone they were in. The other car was moving so quickly it had actually shaken Dick’s cruiser.

“Jesus!” Matheson exclaimed, bracing himself with a hand on the dashboard. Dick, however, simply scowled and flipped on the lights and siren, giving chase. It wasn’t a very long chase, the car had slowed down, found a spot to pull over, and stopped. 

“Stay here,” Dick said as he opened the car door.

“Why?” Matheson asked. He was supposed to shadow Dick on everything but Dick hardly wanted him around to watch him argue with Bruce. 

“Because I said so,” Dick replied, putting on his best big brother tone. Matheson must have been a younger sibling because that actually worked. When Dick leaned down through the driver’s side window he was completely unsurprised but entirely annoyed to find an unrepentant Bruce Wayne with a beautiful woman Dick had never seen before in the front seat. At least she had the decency to look nervous. Dick wondered if she had drugs on her. 

“What are you doing?” he asked Bruce.

“You look tired,” Bruce replied, avoiding the question. 

“I’m on a double,” he mumbled. “License, registration.”

“You haven’t been answering your phone,” Bruce said, making no move to hand over the documents Dick wanted. The woman was looking between them, clearly figuring out that they knew each other; her anxiety was dropping by the second. 

“Because I’m working a double!” Dick snapped, frustrated. He put his hand out in a clear gesture that he wanted to be handed something. “License, registration.”

This was clearly a well-disguised wellness check. Dick wondered if Bruce had managed to put a tracker in his cruiser. He’d once found a tracker embedded in the chip of his credit card, one in the back of his iPod, and another in his favorite watch. Not to mention the trackers in his suit and personal car. And everyone knew about the time he and Jason had discovered trackers embedded under the skin of their shoulders. 

Bruce hadn’t been nearly repentant enough about that one. 

He finally complied and Dick went through the motions of writing him a ticket. When he handed it to Bruce, the man simply looked up at him, confused. 

“What’s this?” he asked. 

“A speeding ticket,” Dick said, smirking at him. “Now go home.”

“I’m not taking this,” Bruce said, trying to hand it back. Dick looked at him like he was crazy. 

“You can’t just hand it back, Bruce,” he replied. “That’s not how this works.”

He spent the next half hour arguing with Bruce on the side of the road about whether or not Dick would take the speeding ticket back. There were several moments when Dick had wondered if he was being obtuse on purpose because of the woman in the front seat or if he was arguing with Dick because he just wanted to argue. It had taken him well into his teens to finally figure out that Bruce’s love language was arguing. 

Dick had eventually just walked away, gotten back in his cruiser, and drove away with a very befuddled trainee. He eventually found the tracker on his cruiser, though he never removed it. It ended up being easier to just let Bruce keep tabs on him.


	16. Bad Boys

Bruce would always maintain that Jason was his most complicated child. Dick was fairly stable, all things considered, acting as a rock not only to him and the others in Wayne Manor, but to the superhero community at large as well. Tim was difficult but easily predicted. Cassandra was steady, Duke malleable, and Damian consistent. 

Jason, however, could pivot faster than anyone sometimes leaving Bruce with the feeling of whiplash. He had been like that as a boy too, before he'd died, before he'd even completed enough training to be Robin. He would wear a snarky, tough guy mask that would occasionally fall and let out something vulnerable. Before anyone could get too close to that vulnerability, he'd snap that mask back into place, shutting everyone out. It had taken a long time of simply refusing to go away for Jason to believe that Bruce wouldn't throw him back into the streets at the first sign of genuine human emotion. 

It had taken even longer before Jason would let Bruce back in after he came back to life, believing him to be an enemy. But he had eventually come home for the most part even sleeping in his old room every now and then, which Bruce had left untouched. The first thing Jason had done when he'd found that out was to find an old, very stale joint that he'd hidden in a text book.

Alfred had not been pleased.

Every now and then, Jason would walk into the kitchen looking for breakfast or coffee, usually in a hoodie and sweatpants and looking like he'd been asleep for the last twelve hours. He would then stay for exactly two days, annoying Damian and demanding Bruce spar with him before he took off for a couple of months. Bruce could almost set his watch by it, Jason had become so routine.

Jason never called though. He would either make someone else call on his behalf, usually Tim, or text, usually speaking in only emojis. 

So when Jason had actually picked up the phone and called, Bruce had walked out of a budget meeting the second he saw his name on the screen. And he'd left Wayne Enterprises just as abruptly when Jason had asked him to drive him to the hospital.

"I think my appendix burst," he said. "It fucking hurts."

Bruce was lucky he hadn't been pulled over for speeding.

00000

Jason's appendix had burst as he'd suspected and on arrival to the hospital he had been rushed to emergency surgery. Bruce strongly suspected that the star treatment they received throughout the stay wasn't so much that the boy was near death but who the listed parent was in Jason's file. Bruce had taken Jason to this hospital a few times back in the day when his stunts landed him with a concussion or broken bone.

Hours later as the boy recovered from the anesthesia, Bruce had simply listened to him mumble about anything that came to mind, making sure the nurses didn't get too close to hear. Sitting on the edge of Jason's bed, Bruce made a sincere effort not to laugh at some of the things Jason was saying. 

"I don't think Dick's all bad," Jason slurred. "He just really fucking annoys me."

"Does he now?" Bruce replied. 

"Yeah," Jason said. "He likes Mondays. That's just stupid."

"Sure," Bruce said, not pointing out that Jason shouldn't care about what day of the week it was. He didn't have a job. 

"And Tim, pfffft," Jason continued. "Kid's a fucking nutcase. His coffee is poison, like legit poison."

"He puts Redbull in it," Bruce told him. "That's why it tastes that way."

"I think Dami is my favorite," Jason said, which actually surprised Bruce. "He's at least interesting with all the swords and dogs and shit."

"Of course," Bruce said. The conversation had ultimately devolved from there with Jason providing rambling critiques of everyone he knew from Commissioner Gordan to his sixth grade teacher whom he'd never forgiven for calling him a street rat. 

"I'll show him street rat!" Jason yelled and Bruce had to stop him from getting out of bed. "I'll throw him into Crime Alley!"

He quieted down the more he sobered up until he eventually stopped talking. He wouldn't sleep though and Bruce simply waited, knowing that Jason was probably looking for the words of what he wanted to say. He did that, when the conversation was hard for him.

"Thanks," he finally said. "For answering. And for staying with me. I hate hospitals."

"I know," Bruce said. "I'll always answer the phone Jason. You can always call."

"Okay," the boy mumbled, finally slipping into sleep.


	17. Parent-Teacher Conference Part I

The first time Bruce had been forced to speak with a teacher as a parent had been when he was twenty-two years old, newly minted as the sexiest man in the world, and incredibly confused about why he was there. He had gotten the call earlier that day while on a lunch date with a Russian model who had thought it was beyond sexy that he could speak her language. He had been forced to ignore her nibbling on his ear while trying to speak to Mrs. Grimes, the ancient youth counselor at Gotham Academy. She handled all the problem students in the lower years.

She had been unimpressed by his lateness even when he'd explained the ten car pile-up on the freeway. Looking back at that first meeting about Dick's troubles settling into school, he could see why she was so annoyed with him. He could see how ridiculous it looked, a twenty-two-year-old playboy with no noticeable level of maturity trying to play parent to a nine-year-old orphan he didn't know. He also felt a bit out of his depth as Mrs. Grimes had rambled about how Dick was settling into the class which, apparently, wasn't going well. 

She had blatantly accused the kid of refusing to fit in.

"He's fine," Bruce had said tensely, not at all pleased to hear that last bit. "Besides, why does he need to fit in? He’s fine just the way he is.”

"It's not that he needs to change," the woman said, pivoting to a different tactic in the face of his abject protectiveness. "It's that he needs to adjust. He's been shifted into a lifestyle he doesn't know and he isn't adjusting. Dick himself told me that he was previously homeschooled at the circus. I would imagine that having to suddenly sit at a desk for eight hours every day is going to drive him wild. And based on his behavior in class, I do believe it is driving him wild."

"What kind of behavior?" Bruce asked. "He hasn't mentioned getting into trouble."

"Most children don't," Grimes said, her grey eyebrows lifting in a clear expression of disbelief at his ignorance. "But Dick has been acting out; arguing with teachers and fellow students; refusing to hand in homework; sometimes even refusing to come back from recess until we threaten to call you."

"What do I do?" Bruce asked, legitimately at a loss. What was he supposed to do with any of that information? He should have brought Alfred with him. Alfred had been through this with Bruce as a child. He'd know exactly what to say. 

Grimes had handed him a folder stuffed with all the things she wanted him to do. There were homework tracking sheets to ensure Dick was complying with classwork and a full list of all the kid's teachers. Bruce already had that, illegally, but it was nice to have it legitimately as well. She had recommended not telling the boy he was in trouble but simply letting him know that they were trying something else to get him back on track. 

Bruce had followed her advice to the letter and Dick had rapidly settled in after that. It helped that Bruce would wear him down with training before and after school. Dick had been a child with so much energy that Bruce had desperately needed a place to put it. 

Grimes had quickly become his main contact at the school and quite possibly one of the few people outside of the family he trusted with the kids. She was old and cranky, she put up with no-nonsense from any parent, and as far as Bruce could tell, she loved her job. Dick had liked her as well and every time Bruce enrolled a child at the Academy, Dick would sarcastically ask him if the old lady had given him another folder with his marching orders. 

Bruce hadn't much appreciated the tone.


	18. Parent-Teacher Conference Part II

Bruce had never seen Mrs. Grimes as scary as she was when faced with parents of feuding children. Despite the fact that Bruce was considered one of the most powerful people in the world much less the city, he could barely look her in the eye. And it wasn’t even him she was glaring at. 

She was glaring at the woman sitting next to him. The mother of the child twelve-year-old Jason had punched in the jaw so hard he’d knocked out a tooth. 

It happened on the playground earlier that day after a supposed verbal scuffle. There had been a security tape which Mrs. Grimes had shown them both. Bruce had, correctly, not mentioned Jason’s impeccable form. 

The woman, Martina Ulster, had presented an entirely different reaction. She wasn’t from Gotham; rather she hailed from the elite of Star City and had landed a Gotham City boy while in college something the native socialites had never forgiven her for. Bruce was sympathetic to the fact that she had been through a lot in her fifteen-year marriage.

Still, he was entirely unable to offer comfort when she burst into tears and exclaimed, “This never would have happened if the Academy would maintain stricter standards!”

“What kind of standards?” Mrs. Grimes asked, tightlipped. Bruce could feel a scolding coming on. He wished Martina luck. 

“Admissions standards,” she sobbed. “Since when does the Academy let in street rats?”

“That’s my kid,” Bruce seethed and the woman froze utterly. Perhaps she had thought Bruce was doing someone a favor or simply seeking good press. That and other accusations had been floated around before. Whatever her personal opinions, she had clearly not expected to insult a Wayne when called in about a schoolyard tussle. 

Bruce had expected her to defend herself; instead, she turned and fled, sobbing hysterically, make-up running down her face. 

When the door of Mrs. Grimes’s intimately familiar office clicked shut behind the woman, Bruce turned back to her. 

“Tea?” she offered already moving to the station in the corner with a full English tea set. She flipped on the electric kettle and they made small talk while the tea steeped. 

“Tell me about Jason,” Bruce said when she handed him a delicate cup in a saucer. She had added a biscuit to it as well. Mrs. Grimes had been wholly surprised when he, at twenty-three and still very much playing into a rough around the edges kind of persona, had complimented her on the tea set she’d received for Christmas. After he had told her about being raised by an English butler, she had offered him a cup of tea. They had been sharing tea with each other ever since. 

He hadn’t seen her since Dick had graduated from the upper school a couple of years ago and he had been meaning to have another long chat with her once she’d gotten a good handle on the type of boy Jason was. The call about the punch had come preemptively. 

“A remarkably bright child,” she started and then launched into a half-hour lecture about the state of Jason’s education. She thought it a crime that such a bright boy had fallen through the cracks. “I wouldn’t worry too much about the fight, though.”

“Really?” he asked. 

“Oh, yes,” she said, finishing the last sip of her own tea. “He’ll be quite alright. Once he settles in, of course.”

“No folder for me then?” he teased. She set down her teacup, reached into her desk, and handed him a bright red folder with his latest marching orders.


	19. Parent-Teacher Conference Part III

The next time Bruce saw Mrs. Grimes he was pushing forty, fully in denial about it, and had just pushed through temporary guardianship papers for Tim. Brilliant, brilliant Tim who was thirteen-years-old, who had recently lost his parents, one the grave and one to a coma, and who he had wrongly assumed was going to be the easy child.

Tim had been enrolled at Gotham Academy either as a day student or a boarder since he was in kindergarten. Bruce had assumed he was perfectly settled, and perhaps he was in his own unique Tim like way, but he had assumed it would be a while before he had to carve out enough time to make a phone call to Mrs. Grimes. He had half been hoping to bypass this part of the process entirely. 

However, the ink had barely dried on the paperwork when he’d gotten a call from the school demanding his presence in Mrs. Grimes's office as soon as possible, ideally that same day if he could swing it. The vague urgency piqued his interest. After all, if the boy had been in trouble the school would have said as much.

He cleared his afternoon schedule and braced himself for tea with Mrs. Grimes. He idly wondered if she was planning on retiring any time soon. She was pushing seventy but the thought of having to break in a new counselor was displeasing to him so he never brought it up with her lest he give her ideas. 

He really wasn’t sure what he had expected when he arrived but what he honestly didn’t expect was for her to launch into a speech the second he sat down. She was so flustered she didn’t even give him his tea. 

“It was a shock to find out that you would be the one taking over Timothy’s guardianship,” she said. “Though I must say, I do find you to be far more amiable than the Drakes ever were. Such unlikeable people. Really, Bruce, you should see some of the emails they’ve sent me over the years. Threatening legal action just because I did my job! It’s my job to ask them if they managed to feed the boy or even just talk to him in the last thirty days! It’s my job!”

She went on like that for a while. 

Eventually, they landed on Tim’s behavior at the school.

“The teachers believe he’s selling contraband on school property,” she told him. He eyed her suspiciously. 

“What kind of contraband?” he asked, concerned. In a school like this, contraband could be anything from candy to hard drugs.

“Nothing illegal,” Mrs. Grimes said, but she wasn’t quite meeting his eye.

“Then what is he selling?” he asked. 

“Condoms,” she finally blurted out and Bruce had made an outright effort not to laugh in her face. What would Tim be doing selling condoms? He still blushed bright red every time Dick asked him if he’d gotten his first kiss yet. Bruce knew for a fact that Tim was still working on that step. He wasn’t anywhere near ready for sex. 

“Why?” he asked. 

“There has been a rash of pregnancy scares on campus among the students in the upper school,” she replied. “And while he’ll never admit it, I believe that he’s doing it to provide a much-needed service. I’ve tried to get them in the nurse’s office but such things are frowned upon.

“Well,” Bruce sighed. “Okay, then.”

“Yes,” Mrs. Grimes replied. “I had much of the same reaction.”

“So,” he hedged, almost afraid to broach the subject, “do you have my new folder?”

She reached to the desk beside her, grabbed the three-inch binder sitting on top, and slapped it into his hand. Bruce eyed it, shocked.

“Let’s begin,” she said, sounding perfectly smug.


End file.
